In week five of our Teacher Fellowship Programme, ‘The Cold War in the Classroom‘ in collaboration with the Historical Association, discussions moved away from standard Cold War narratives, to instead focus upon how the Cold War impacted ordinary life on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In the following article, originally published for The Historical Association, Jessica Reinisch provides insight into the weeks’ discussions.

The Cold War in the Home: kitchen debate, consumerism, everyday life
This week was all about moving away from the standard Cold War narratives of political summits and military showdowns of the superpowers. Instead, we asked our teachers to think about how the Cold War dynamics impacted upon ‘ordinary life’ on either side of the Iron Curtain. The reading focused on the Soviet National Exhibition in New York in June-July 1959, and the reciprocated American National Exhibition in Moscow a few weeks later. Susan Reid’s article on ‘Soviet popular reception of the American National Exhibition in Moscow’, and a document collection edited by Shane Hamilton and Sarah Phillips, provided context on the infamous ‘Kitchen Debate’ between Richard Nixon and Nikita Krushchev. Elena Hore’s podcast considered the impact of the Cold War on Russian families. An essay by Cristina Carbone looked at US reactions to the exhibition in New York. A list of references is included at the end of this report.

Key points emerging in the discussion about the history were…

The two exhibitions took place in the late 1950s because of a new emphasis on US-Soviet cultural exchanges and mutual understanding. But most of our teachers agreed that they were still vehicles for a competition between the superpowers – particularly a competition over living standards, which took place alongside the more familiar military and diplomatic showdowns of the Cold War:

“The Cold War was, at its simplest level, a competitive relationship between the two dominant superpowers of the time, the USA and USSR. While this relationship was often fractious and defined by direct political conflict, this was not the only level at which the relationship operated. The impact of this relationship on everyday life has been explored by social historians such as Reid (2008), Hamilton & Phillips (2014), and Carbone (2008). However, it should still be noted that social historians of the Cold War often focus on how standards of living and advances in technology were still used as weapons during the Cold War.”

“The publicly stated objective of these exhibitions was to ‘strengthen the foundation of world peace’ through mutual understanding of the other country’s lives in a range of areas such as science, culture and technology. The exhibitions had lesser publicised motives however – for the Soviets it was learn from the allegedly superior Americans so that they could ‘catch up and overtake’ whilst for the Americans it was an exercise in counterpropaganda and an opportunity to culturally infiltrate the Soviet Union. On that basis I would argue that the two national exhibitions were another showdown between the superpowers, just in the field of the lesser known cultural Cold War…. This was not really about peaceful co-existence but about what both sides could gain in the ongoing cultural propaganda capitalist/communist competition.”

The exhibitions were “ideologically driven, designed to show the other side the positives of living in either a Communist or Capitalist society. The time and effort that went into organising them and the level of displays (having Sputnik there, and rebuilding ‘American homes’) demonstrates that really this was quite high stakes.”

“The situation in the ‘home’ became the battleground which would demonstrate the success of their ideology. Through a comparison of the power of consumerism each side sought to outdo the other.”

“The Cold War was not just summits and showdowns. The emphasis of the high politics of the Cold War leaves us assuming that this ‘competition’ was not felt by the average citizen. The intrinsic nature of the Cold War is best demonstrated through the study of the cultural exchanges emerging in the period of Peaceful Coexistence.”

Many agreed that the Kitchen Debate was not an isolated encounter, but rather stood for a much more general ‘Soft’ Cold War:

The exhibitions were “not the only example of the ‘Soft War’ between capitalism and communism within the Cold War; this was the ideological contest which would be measured by the qualities of people’s lives. Khrushchev’s ‘Virgin Lands’ policy and housing reforms transformed parts of the USSR; the Soviet leader announced ‘All you have to do to get a house in the USSR is be born. In the USA you only have the right to live under a bridge’. So, perhaps life in the USSR was not as bad as western historians would have us believe. The ‘Soft War’ was mainly an American barrage which was meant to undermine the social fabric of the Soviet Union.”

“While the exhibitions were the centrepiece of this new ‘peaceful competition’, there were also other examples of this type of policy through the international promotion of US household goods and services, and announcements about strides in Soviet technology, such as the success of Sputnik in 1957. Through any means possible, both superpowers attempted to demonstrate the superiority of their values and economic systems.”

“Behind the scenes, the lesser known ‘Soft Cold War’ reveals as much about the aims and objectives of the establishments in both countries and more about how ordinary people felt about life behind the iron curtain.”

Central to this ‘Soft’ Cold War were skewed portrayals of ‘ordinary life’ on the other side of the Iron Curtain as significantly worse than at home.

“Both East and West were able to use propaganda to perpetuate these images of the other, images that while having some basis in reality were very convenient to those in power. As Dr Hore explained in the podcast; the Cold War was convenient for the Soviet leadership as it meant that people were willing to sacrifice in order to prevent attack. This image of the oppressed people of Eastern Europe was a convenient one for the West. It gave them justification for high defence spending, questionable foreign policy and involvement in proxy wars throughout the period.

“I also found the exhibitions interesting [because] of course neither of them truly reflected what everyday life was like in the Cold War under both ideologies- both were idealised presentations of the achievements of either side. And those idealised versions were generally (if we are to believe the feedback) disliked by those viewing the exhibitions. It was interesting to see that the US and USSR citizens were very against the other’s ideals too – that this ideological conflict wasn’t just being fought at the highest level but that everyday citizens were hostile to their ‘opponent’s’ way of life.”

What results did this propaganda war ultimately have?

“The US hoped to prove the superiority of the capitalist system by finding answers to questions such as ‘Is there potential for resistance to the Soviet regime? Is disaffection growing? They wanted to uncover ‘the real attitude of the Soviet people towards the regime and the society in which they live’. The Soviets, on the other hand hoped that the exhibition would reveal a solidarity amongst its citizens, a belief in the socialist project that would be enhanced by seeing what they ‘could have’ somewhere in the not so distant future. The reading reveals that neither side really got what they wanted from the 1959 exhibition or the exhibitions that followed…. the US failed, short term, to prove the superiority of their domestic situation. Had they exerted more influence over the Soviet people through the exhibitions, their victory in the Cold War may have been secured more quickly, a victory secured away from the ‘showdowns and summits’. More long term, however, the Soviets failed in their quest to ‘catch up’ with the West and their decision to ‘compete with the United States in consumerism was the final nail in its coffin’. The Soviet state could not compete in both fields and survive, economically. The system lost ‘popular legitimacy’.”

Some of the teachers also thought about the role played by public opinion in this propaganda.

“Governments had to be responsive to, and to some extent wary of, public conceptions of what the Cold War meant for each country. This is reinforced in two ways by Reid’s analysis of the responses to the 1959 exhibition amongst the Soviet public. Firstly in the suggestion that the US government’s decision to focus on consumerism (perhaps partly inspired by Mrs Rice) backfired, that the Soviets saw this as too concentrated on fripperies rather than the substance of what had made America great, causing the US to fail in making the propaganda breakthrough which they had hoped for. The decision to take such an approach can partly be attributed to US public pressure to display what they viewed as one of the key benefits of the capitalist system, consumer choice. The second example of the importance of public opinion is the Soviet reaction to the exhibition. Reid argues that this was largely negative, perhaps in response to the Soviet conception of the main strength of the communist system – that they were working collaboratively to build a better future for the USSR. Their focus on heavy industry, culture and self-sacrifice effectively protected from the deliberate ‘temptation’ of the US exhibition. These examples suggest that the public opinion in each country, shaped though it was by propaganda, was key in both sustaining the Cold War – the public of each side supported the actions of their government as they were committed to their world-view.”

“If this link between changing representations of communism, public opinion and the collapse of communism could be better substantiated then it would certainly re-frame the ideas about the nature of the Cold War, the importance of public opinion (the triumphalist view that the Soviet people were ‘duped’ for example) and the context of Gorbachev’s reforms.”

Although most agreed that this ‘Soft’ Cold War was significant to the history of the Cold War, some of our teachers argued that it would be a mistake to forget about the military and diplomatic confrontations.

“Dr Elena Hore in her podcast highlights her personal experiences and identifies a change to economic competition from a purely military [one]. However, this understanding does rather glibly relegate events linked to any military competition and ignore tensions that continued throughout the period as shown in the Cuban Missile crisis through to ‘Star Wars’ in the 1980’s.”

Although debates about living standards “demonstrate that the Cold War existed beyond the summit meetings and high-stakes showdowns, it would be a mistake to take them at face value as “peaceful competition”. The ‘Kitchen Debate’ may not have been in danger of sparking a nuclear war, however there is no question that both Khrushchev and Nixon were working hard to demonstrate the superiority of their ideological systems with real stakes in terms of international relations. Similarly, even within the context ‘peaceful cooexistence’ and ‘containment’, these moments constituted showdowns of a sort. As a result, while studies of the Cold War should consider more than just the high points of conflict, they should never do so at the expense of losing sight they fit into the competitive element of the Cold War.”

Impact on teaching?

Some of this weeks’ primary sources and podcasts seemed particularly useful for giving students a richer picture of the Cold War.

“I am trying to bring the podcasts into my teaching as I think they provide a fascinating insight into the motivation of the two superpowers. Hore was also quick to point out that the war itself was fought between the authorities not the people, highlighting the imperable nature of the Cold War.”

“I also particularly enjoyed the video footage of Khrushchev and Nixon, and will be using that in future lessons without a doubt!”

Our teachers also saw plenty of ways in which the ideas and content of the week’s readings could be put to use in the classroom.

“I think that the kitchen debate provides students of the Cold War with a welcome break from learning about summits and showdowns and a ‘top down’ approach, which for understandable reasons dominates Cold War study, particularly at GCSE and A Level. Not only does the kitchen debate and the exhibitions in both the US and USSR allow students of the Cold War to gain an insight into the views, values and attitudes towards the ‘other’ of ordinary Soviet and American citizens, albeit through the use of sources which are at times questionable in their reliability, it also allows for a great opportunity to make memorable to students some of the many ‘fronts’ on which the Cold War was fought – propaganda, scientific and technological progress and of course, the comparative living standards and consumer products in the East and West.”

“Individual experiences and ‘stories’ enrich our understanding of the Cold War. They also make it more accessible for our students and challenge them to question the ‘official view’, taking into account the positive aspects of life under communism.”

“I also found, as part of the Kitchen Debate, the perceived position of women as an interesting point to explore. As part of the A Level Modern Britain course we explore how consumerism arguably reinforced the image of the woman as the ‘angel in the home’ and this is something Khrushchev argued with Nixon about – that socialism and the collective community was more liberating for women. Another area deserving further exploration is the position of African Americans – regularly exploited in Soviet propaganda. Hamilton and Phillips point to the ‘deep cracks’ in the post war liberal economic consensus in the US – segregation being one of those cracks. Capitalist mass consumption, hailed in US propaganda, was not possible for Black Americans and was used as a powerful weapon by the civil rights movement. Therefore, I think that civil rights progress in the US could be an interesting and quite different way of considering how ordinary lives were affected by the Cold War. Lastly, Khrushchev’s fall from power being as influenced by his kick starting of the consumer society as his foreign policy ‘showdowns’, has also been a salient learning point for me this week.”

References

The 1959 ‘Kitchen Debate’ between Richard Nixon and Nikita Krushchev: video and transcript

Susan Reid, “‘Who Will Beat Whom?’ Soviet Popular Reception of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 9, No. 4 (2008), 855-904.

HA podcast: Elena Hore, ‘Impact of the Cold War on the ordinary Russian family’

Shane Hamilton and Sarah Phillips, The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics: a brief history with documents (Bedford/ St.Martin’s, 2014), “Introduction: The Kitchen Debate in Historical Context”, 1-31.

As part of the Being Human festival’s series documenting examples of best practice public engagement, we were recently asked to reflect on our experiences of organising the International London: Walking Tours that took place in November last year.

Tell us a bit about your event. What subject areas did you cover and what did you want to achieve?

For Being Human 2016, the Reluctant Internationalists led a series of walking tours around central London exploring the city as the home of international projects. We tried to present an alternative history of London, as a magnet for international ideas and collaborations.

We conducted three tours on Wartime London (led by Jessica Reinisch), Epidemic London (led by Dora Vargha), and Communist London (led by Ana Antic & Johanna Conterio). Each tour took participants through the streets of central London to illuminate the stories, lives and organisations often hidden amid the contemporary bustle of the city.

The tours aimed to bring to life the Reluctant Internationalists project’s research on the history of twentieth-century internationalism, by telling engaging stories about people, places and events. Anchoring these stories in the sites of contemporary London, allowed us to engage the public with research and demonstrate how the history of international collaboration was shaped by and in turn helped to shape the city.

What worked particularly well in the planning, design and delivery of your event?

Organising three tours around separate themes helped to ensure the walks had a clear focus and a consistent historical narrative. The tours’ academic leads drew on their research and specialist knowledge of the international history of London.

The format of the walking tours also helped to open up the project’s research to new audiences and created an excellent opportunity for academics to conduct Public Engagement with Research in an accessible format. The academics created engaging, personalised tours –one handed out home baking made to an original wartime ration-era recipe and another evoked the spirit of the era by leading a group sing-a-long of socialist songs.

Additionally, the design of the event provided an opportunity to live tweet the walks. This created a new means of visual engagement with the project’s work using social media – it greatly helped that the sun was shining for all three walks!

What were the main challenges and how did you overcome these?

For the event, registrations were managed via an online booking system. However, this proved challenging; attendance numbers were difficult to monitor and regulate, especially as the tours were free and open to all. Similarly, keeping the walking group together at times proved problematic due to the number of attendees.

What, if any, other audience outcomes did you identify? What were the main outcomes for you and /or your organisation?

We were delighted with the range of participants and that several people attended more than one tour. From the feedback collected in online questionnaires and interviews recorded on the day, it was noted especially that the tours were engaging and informative:

‘I learned much more than I had expected. They were really informative.’
‘I thought it was very well formulated, the guides were all well informed, a good mixture of walking as well as information…I can go away and think about the themes of people and networks and places and how they fit together.’

What top tips would you give to anyone contemplating or running a similar event or events in the future?

Planning is key! Walk the routes in advance and take consideration of access requirements.

Utilise social media both for promotion and during the event itself. Live tweeting the tours enabled us to create a visual record of each tour as well as engaging a wider audience.

Be flexible and ensure schedules can be adapted if unforeseen circumstances arise, for example blocked routes or having to change the pace of a walk.

Document the event through a variety of means (for example photographs, interviews, blog posts, and guides to key stops.) We are also developing digital ‘reconstructions’ of the tours to enable links in London’s international history to be further emphasised.

This article was originally published as a case study on the Being Human festival website. The original can be accessed here.

Week four of our Teacher Fellowship Programme, ‘The Cold War in the Classroom‘ in collaboration with the Historical Association, focused on the Iron Curtain with the Fellows examining how permeable it was. In the following article, originally published for The Historical Association, Ben Walsh provides a summary of the discussions.

Iron Curtain: how permeable was it?

This week the focus was on the Iron Curtain, and the extent to which it was really an impenetrable barrier or whether it was possible for people, information and ideas to cross it. Our teachers were asked to read Michael David-Fox’s book chapter ‘The Iron Curtain as Semipermeable Membrane’ and Mark Smith’s article ‘Peaceful coexistence at all costs: Cold War exchanges between Britain and the Soviet Union in 1956’. They were also asked to look at the multimedia online resource Commuting between East and West. There was a lot of discussion on how these articles challenged preconceptions about the Iron Curtain, along with some thoughtful responses to the ways in which Berlin might be used as a resource for helping students to develop an understanding of the mechanisms of the Cold War which went beyond the simplistic.

Key points emerging in the discussion about the history were…

The contrast between the relative (im)permeability of the Berlin Wall compared to the Iron curtain more generally:

Whilst the reading this week alluded to the ability to gain knowledge and resources from the West despite the descent of the Iron Curtain across Europe, I feel that the Berlin Wall in particular came to represent Stalin’s portrayal of it after Churchill’s initial speech: a way of keeping the West out. Whilst a vital measure in stabilising Europe after its construction in 1961, it ultimately divided families and allowed for the creation of a semi-totalitarian state in the GDR which affected people’s lives in a variety of ways. The Berlin Wall was not permeable in the way that the Iron Curtain was.

The essential importance of expert knowledge in making sense of, and injecting nuance to, historical situations by placing them in context, particularly the context of differing perspectives:

Michael David Fox’s ‘The Iron Curtain as a semi permeable membrane’ was illuminating. I particularly liked Peteri’s phrase ‘The Nylon Curtain’ to symbolise the desirability and availability of Western consumer goods. Despite Khrushchev’s declaration that the USSR would “catch up and overtake” the USA in consumer goods it is clear that many Soviet citizens believed that “Soviet culture, values and lifestyle trumped advances in technology or goods.” This reminded me of Marietta Shaginian’s article, ‘Refelctions on the American Exhibition’, that we discussed at the residential. What a fascinating insight into the difference in values between the East and West to challenge the ‘western capitalist’ assumption that consumer goods must always be desirable. Kitchen household appliances in the 1950s and way beyond were marketed in the West as a means with which to ‘liberate’ women and make their roles as wives and mothers easier. As Shaginian argues from a different cultural perspective “The countless everyday conveniences of the Americans forever consolidate, as it were, the mission of woman as household manager, as wife and cook…But we like new developments that actually emancipate women: new types of buildings with a large shared kitchen for all inhabitants, that is to say, with a cafeteria; with a laundry room where gigantic machines do all the laundry, not just for a single family…”

The reading this week has certainly developed my subject knowledge. I found the Michael David Fox article on the origins and demise of the Stalinist Inferiority Complex particularly interesting. The way in which the idea of superiority was protected by isolationism and threatened by Khrushchev’s thaw is intriguing. Yagoda’s arrest during the Great Terror revealed ‘that the Soviet elite were addicted to the far-from-forbidden fruits of Western material culture’, yet they continually asserted Soviet superiority. Soviet troops, as they moved into Poland in September 1939, assumed that they would be ‘raising the newly conquered territories up from backwardness’, but found that Poland was actually ‘the land of plenty’. They also continued to assert that ‘we have everything’.

The value of particular sites in Berlin in understanding particular aspects of the Cold War:

Tränenpalast (‘Palace of Tears’) at Friedrichstraße station is a great place to visit after seeing segments of the Berlin Wall or Checkpoint Charlie. It was at the Friedrichstraße train station where families from the east and west were allowed to meet and eventually say their tearful farewells (hence the nickname). The museum is small, but fairly new, and contains some great resources which you can use to explain the ‘permeable divide’.

Reminders that the Cold War is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon and that many individual stories fail to conform to traditional bipolar accounts:

Rudi Dutschke Strasse could be used to illustrate the possibility of political and ideological interchange. This would be an opportunity to explore how the two sides were not completely ideologically isolated by looking at the story of Rudi Dutschke, a memorial plaque to whom is found here (he was shot in the head here by a anti-communist during a protest in 1968). Dutschke was educated in the GDR, but fled to the West just before the building of the wall. Here he was involved in the 1968 student protests against the oppressive nature of the West German regime and the Vietnam War. He was then expelled from the UK whilst attending Cambridge University by Ted Heath for being an ‘undesirable’. We could therefore assume that he was almost a communist agent, however in the 1970s he began to plot against the communist governments in Eastern Europe. His story therefore might illustrate the non-binary nature of Cold War politics (as stressed in the Mikkonen and Koivunen article).

Impact on teaching?

At the end of the week, it was clear that the reading and discussion had really got our teachers thinking and several of them were getting quite excited as they had visits to Berlin coming up! Several of the teachers are also beginning to clarify their thinking about the resources they are going to create, which will of course be shared via the HA website.

I enjoyed the first focus this week, as I have always found Berlin a fascinating example of where a geographic location can be imbued with symbolic significance beyond its strategic value, similar to Jerusalem during the Crusades or Stalingrad during the Second World War. Within my teaching I have returned to Berlin as a ‘touchstone’ at key points and used it as a way of identifying changes as well as continuities within the conflict. This will now be supplemented with further examples drawn the HA podcast this week by Holger Nehring, which I found very useful. For example, while I do use the Kennedy speech in my teaching, I have not considered using the Reagan speech in the same way even though I knew it existed. As a result, I feel once again that my subject knowledge has been deepened by this course in a way that will make a direct impact in my classroom teaching.

Khrushchev’s continuation of the superiority complex, in terms of culture and lifestyle also really interests me. The way in which the idea that consumer goods could be used in a ‘collectivist, socialist lifestyle’ was pushed – collectivist carpools for example – is fascinating. The ‘insuperable’ challenge that the superiority complex faced when the SU opened to the outside world is something that I would certainly explore with A Level students, and possibly GCSE. In terms of the resource, I am definitely drawn to the idea of creating something which focuses on everyday life in the SU and Eastern Europe. I’m intrigued by why an ‘Ostaligia’ – yearning to return to the communist past – emerged in Post Communist Europe and I think this could be a good enquiry question as part of the Year 9 topic on ‘Living under Communist rule’ I am hoping to plan.

Refugees and Children: Writing, Exhibiting and Depicting Refugee Stories for Children

Friday 3rd March, Birkbeck College, University of London

‘Behind the headlines are the stories of individual children’, noted UNICEF Director Paloma Escudero while unveiling a new film earlier this month which presents the dual stories of a young Syrian refugee and a refugee child in World War II. ‘Not refugees, not migrants, but children, whose only dream is safety, and the chance of a brighter future.’

This one-day inter-disciplinary workshop, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists project at Birkbeck College, examines how both historical and contemporary stories of refugees can be told to and interpreted for children.

The workshop will bring together children’s authors, illustrators, publishers, museum professionals and academics to consider the ways in which different disciplines depict the stories of refugees for children. Throughout the workshop we will think about how refugee narratives are written, exhibited and delivered to children.

Three sessions will engage with particular media (chiefly, books and museum exhibits). The final part of the workshop will give children’s authors and illustrators the opportunity to present current projects and receive ideas and feedback from the range of professionals participating in the workshop.

In week three of our Teacher Fellowship Programme, ‘The Cold War in the Classroom‘ in collaboration with the Historical Association, the Fellows examined the flash points and near misses of the conflict, with particular focus on the ‘Able Archer 83’ incident.

In the following article, originally published on The Historical Association, The Reluctant Internationalists’ Jessica Reinisch provides an overview of the discussions.

Flash points and near misses: why didn’t the Cold War ever turn into a ‘hot’ one?

This week our teachers read up on a still relatively little-known Cold War incident, a routine NATO military exercise named ‘Able Archer 83’ that took place in Western Europe in November 1983. The simulation was so realistic that it convinced some Soviet officials that the West was preparing for a nuclear strike. We asked our group to read excerpts from the recently declassified Able Archer report, along with a Guardian article about the declassification and a chapter by Paul Level on Cold War arms control. If they wanted to read more, there was also an article by Arnav Manchanda and the HA podcasts on other Cold War crises. The group discussed the significance of ‘near-misses’ such as Able Archer 83 in the history of the Cold War, and wrote some very thoughtful and imaginative pieces on how they could be taught in the classroom.

Key points emerging in the discussion about the history were…

Thinking about the role of Able Archer in histories of the Cold War got many of our teachers fired up.

Was Operation Able Archer responsible for bringing the world closer to nuclear war than the Cuban Missile Crisis? New information has given us greater understanding of a crisis which started as a game but nearly ended in disaster; Operation Able Archer. Not only did this crisis nearly cause a nuclear war, but it also contributed to the end of the Cold War.

It demonstrated how superficial the so-called achievements of détente had been.

Able Archer shows the non- proliferation treaties and agreements during the Cold War actually, in practice, held little real underlying meaning.

To many of our group, the Able Archer incident highlighted much wider implications and ramifications of the Cold War:

The episode struck me as a way into studying the uniqueness of the Cold War in a global setting. The non-event… seems to set a pattern for other events in the Cold War. Throughout the reading I was thinking about a criteria for ‘danger’ and how within such a long war could students ascertain which events were more dangerous than others. This could be linked to the personalities of those who had their finger on the button – e.g. Reagan’s aggressive stance against the Soviet Union compared to Nixon’s perhaps.

The issues highlighted by Able Archer, although its detail was unknown at the time, are reflected in the contemporary popular culture. In that year ‘The Hunt for Red October’, by Tom Clancy, was being written to be published in 1984; War Games 1983, a popular film, reflecting the dangers of having inflexible systems for defence which isolate human intervention was being shown. Interestingly it was actually the human element that eventually led to the Able Archer situation being defused. Finally, ‘The Day After’ an American television film first aired on November 20, 1983 and had an impact on Reagan. The role of the media in the Cold War could be an area launched from a study of the incident.

…the best reason for looking at Able Archer is as a means to draw meaningful comparisons between different Cold War crises and thereby deepen students’ understanding of the importance of context in who was willing to confront, compromise and co-operate at different moments during the Cold War, giving depth to their explanations.

…for me it was mainly interesting as a route into thinking about significance. The idea that confrontation in the Cold War had shifted from being very public in the 1950s and 60s (Berlin, Korea, Cuba etc.), to being so secret in the 1980s that one side weren’t even aware that there was a potential conflict, must tell us something. Equally, that this crisis has gone largely unnoticed in many histories of the Cold War also made me think about the public nature of diplomacy in the Cold War, and how this interacts with the writing of history.

Many in our group were in no doubt about the merits of teaching students about a ‘non-event’, a nuclear strike that didn’t happen:

The Able Archer 83 incident could be used as a vehicle to explore a variety of aspects of the Cold War and wider historical concepts.

Firstly, it could be used to teach students content, developing knowledge and understanding on the relative failure and impotence of Détente and the various arms limitation talks as suggested by the Lever article, the impact Reagan’s early aggressive stance on Soviet security concerns, the role of intelligence and espionage, Soviet weaknesses and technological backwardness at the time, and the role of NATO in terms of Western defences and Soviet concerns.

Secondly, using Able Archer to further develop students’ understanding of second order concepts would be an interesting idea.

Causation – Why did the Soviet Union feel an increased threat in 1983? Why did the Cold War come to an end? How far were misunderstandings the reasons behind Cold War tensions?

Significance – Comparison of the threat posed by various Cold War crises including Able Archer, Cuba, Berlin Airlift, Berlin in 1959-61.

Interpretations – Using extracts of the ‘The Soviet War Scare’ source, Deutschland ’83, the Guardian and the Lever article to compare views on the severity of the incident and reasons behind it.

Reliability of sources – how reliable is Deutschland ’83 as representation of Cold War tension in 1983?

Finally, and this may be personal to my own teaching experiences, this period of Cold War history has always been one of the more challenging periods of the conflict to teach/ for my students to remember. Able Archer provides a brilliant reminder to students as to the severity, importance and complexity of Cold War relations and could be an event/ lesson that inspires the intrigue, enthusiasm and reminds of the relevance of studying the Cold War, hopefully keeping motivation high in the final weeks of the course.

Why is it important to teach students about a non-event? … Because Able Archer is itself an outcome of the Cold War. It stands out as a reminder of the role ideology played throughout the conflict. After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, you’d be forgiven for thinking the danger of all out nuclear war had passed – yet Able Archer is a demonstration of the danger of ideologically driven decisions, and how important ideology was in bringing the Soviets to the brink of launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States in 1983.

Why should you teach ‘Able Archer’? To help students to understand the impact of Reagan’s leadership upon Cold War relations and evaluate the Soviet perception of the ‘Evil Empire’ speech; To allow students to explore the relationship between Thatcher and Reagan; To assess its importance to the end of the Cold War; To evaluate the role of intelligence in Cold War relations; To compare its significance to the Cuban Missile Crisis; To explore the role that political suspicion and misunderstanding played throughout the Cold War crises.

A study into the Cold War is extremely difficult due to the unique structural factors at play within it, particularly the presence and impact of nuclear weapons. One inherent danger surrounding its study is that students too often can’t appreciate these factors and thus make anachronistic assumptions about the real risk of nuclear war. This lesson would ensure no student could doubt the reality of fear surrounding the use of nuclear weapons in the Cold War, and would be immeasurably enriched from its knowledge.

Why students should learn about Able Archer: Never, perhaps, in the postwar decades was the situation in the world as explosive and hence, more difficult and unfavorable, as in the first half of the 1980s…. Was 1983 the year when the world should have ‘held its breath’? I would strongly recommend a comparison of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Able Archer. In 1983, the Russians didn’t feel in control. They felt out manoeuvred by the US and under incredible pressure from Reagan and the West. This led them to make the ‘irrational, rational’ which could have resulted in them launching a pre-emptive strike against the US. What is quite scary about 1983 is the fact that the general populations were in the dark: unlike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Was Margaret Thatcher the ‘Iron Lady’ or ‘US poodle’?

Why did Operation RYAN lead the Soviets close to nuclear action? Students will find Operation RYAN fascinating. Who would have known that the Soviets would be monitoring the amount of blood donations and the price paid for them as evidence of an imminent nuclear attack. Such was the belief in the ‘fiction’ that intelligence agents in western nations were ordered to find proof. Operation RYAN and how it distorted the Soviet’s view of Able Archer is a great way to being students into the world of Cold War spies.

Although the group as a whole was clearly enthused by the subject, was it worth dedicating a whole lesson to it? Some thought it was…

Able Archer lends itself perfectly to a one off lesson which would engage students whilst allowing them to understand the very real tensions that existed even in the years approaching the end of the Cold War.

…while others argued that it could work better as an example or point of comparison in a lesson with a wider remit:

Personally, I would struggle to devote a whole lesson to Able Archer as studied in isolation I don’t think it is as powerful as taught in combination. … As a lesson resource I would combine it with the Doomsday clock charting events during the Cold War and asking students using contemporary sources to place events of the Cold War onto the clock. It would be interesting to ask students to compare Able Archer to events such as the Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis and ask how close the world did come to a nuclear war, particularly as the clock was 2 minutes to midnight in 1953 (Korean War).

Impact on teaching?

At the end of the week, it was clear that the teachers saw plenty of ways of putting their new knowledge of the Able Archer incident to use in their classroom teaching.

Personally I very much enjoyed the chapter on ‘Secret Nuclear Weapons Accidents’ in the Hanhimaki & Westad collection, as it was all new to me. I’d probably use it at the stage where I challenge students disbelief that such a thing could happen, or even drop it into the conclusion as a sort of ‘does the fact it’s not an isolated incident change your inferences or reinforce them in any way’ activity.

We always focus on the idea of misunderstandings in the origins of the Cold War; it might be interesting to follow this theme through to the final stages of the CW.

I am keen to continue exploring more about the effects of Able Archer – as I would like to know the validity of my assertion that this event was a cause of the end of the Cold War. This event will certainly feature in my teaching of the ‘End of the Cold War’ – probably as a linking lesson between Reagan and Gorbachev.

I’ve really enjoyed looking into Able Archer this week, and have been dropping Operation RYAN into all Cold War conversations I have (surprisingly a lot!). I think it is something I am certainly going to introduce into my A-Level teaching: … the exam textbook we use for the Cold War in Europe course mentions the shooting down of the Korean Airliner and briefly mentions a NATO exercise that heightened tensions, but I really don’t think it does the matter justice. Whilst no major incidents occur, understanding the ideological drive between the two sides at this time, and how it adds to increasing tension at the end of detente are crucial in understanding the path to the end of the Cold War. If nothing else, it continues to assert just how different Gorbachev was compared to his predecessors.

I intend to use the new subject knowledge that I have gained this week to enhance my teaching of the political context of the early 1980s.

I knew very little about Able Archer or Operation Ryan and I have really enjoyed this week’s task. What a fascinating set of events. I teach about Thatcher’s role in ending the Cold War and I have, in the past, taught the Gorbachev era and the end of the Cold War, but I have never considered this event as influential. Most interesting was the heightening of paranoia amongst the Soviet leadership at this time and Operation RYAN. So interesting. I will definitely use what I have learned this week to add context to the Thatcher period and her relationship with Reagan. I think there is also scope for looking at Able Archer as part of the new GCSE (which covers the end of the Cold War). Stories such as these can only enhance understanding and increase engagement in the content.

I am keen to build in the doomsday clock into our teaching and think [Able Archer] could form an interesting part of the discussion as we fill in the students in what happened next before finishing the Cold War.

Reading the executive summary alongside the contemporary sources of other nuclear accidents has provided me with even more examples I can use when teaching the Cold War within my classroom. I also appreciated the challenge of planning a lesson that would not normally fit within an ‘exam orientated’ scheme of work and would have to be justified to SLT or a HoD; I feel it fits in well to my thoughts on the last week’s task about teaching beyond the essentials of the specification in order to broaden and deepen students understanding of the period.

In week two of our Teacher Fellowship Programme, ‘The Cold War in the Classroom‘ in collaboration with the Historical Association, discussions centred upon the nuclear age. In the following article, originally published on The Historical Association, Ben Walsh provides an overview of the week.

Nuclear War

This week in the programme the focus was on nuclear politics and the experience of living under the constant threat of nuclear war. We asked the Teacher Fellows to study another HA podcast, Matthew Grant’s Living in the Atomic Age.

We also asked them to read a couple of articles by David Holloway and David Seed and a book chapter by Jussi M. Hanhimaki and Odd Arne Westad. The references are at the foot of the report. As a task, we then asked them to look at three different examples of film sources relating to the Cold War and we put them in a hypothetical position where they could only choose one film to use in teaching and to justify their choices. Since we do that kind of thing to our students all the time the aim was to give the teachers a taste of how it felt!

Once again this group rose to the challenge, combining scholarship, incredibly imaginative and thoughtful pedagogical thinking and impressive advocacy.

Key points emerging about the history were…

The majority of teachers chose to focus on Duck and Cover or Barefoot Gen (although inevitably some cheated and chose both!). The main theme emerging here was the way in which the nuclear threat was packaged and presented to domestic audiences. As teachers commented:

Having focussed upon the clear limitations of ‘Duck and Cover’ this is still the film that I would choose to use in a lesson. We will soon be studying McCarthyism and the Red Scare at GCSE and I could see that this would be a useful resource in trying to help students understand the culture of fear that must have pervaded the US in the late 40’s and early 50’s.

‘Bert the Turtle’ is certainly useful for demonstrating to students how America perceived the threat of nuclear war in the 1950s. The US Federal Civil Defense Administration (in consultation with the National Education Association) appeared to give a sense of inevitability about “when the bomb goes off” (rather than ‘if…’) – which suggests that the USA was not only preparing itself physically for a nuclear war, but also preparing the mentality and psyche of the population.

I would be interested in getting my class to think about the different ways that the topic of nuclear warfare has been presented to school children. I think students sometimes get caught up in the high politics of the Cold War, so to bring it back to the average person, and in this instance, students like themselves would offer an interesting topic for discussion … There is also very much a sense of constant threat and an emphasis that the pupils in the video should always be alert. The youth of the intended audience is reiterated by the use of Bert the Turtle – if they wanted to protect the innocence of students was there another way to deliver this message?

Listening to the Matthew Grant podcast it got me thinking further about motivation (something I seemed to be drawn back to) and how the US government used the concept of the ‘American family’ to get public support behind US foreign policy and in particular nuclear spending. My students are always shocked when I use the figure $5.5 trillion to describe US spend on nuclear weapons from 1940 – 1996 and will often have interesting questions about why it was such a priority for the USA, alongside the spend, as Steven pointed out on Marshal Aid and Point 4. The podcast also highlighted themes that came out of the podcast last week on the ideological differences of the superpowers and the fear that each side felt for the other. I thought Grant’s focus on the belief that ‘anti-communism would save the American family’ really interesting.

Only a couple of teachers chose to focus on the British Protect and Survive film. If anything, this seemed to highlight even more powerfully the ways in which civil defence shone a light on the relationship between government and people:

After watching ‘Protect and Survive’, I then watched a Panorama episode from March 1980 (2 months before the release of ‘Protect and Survive’) which criticised the British government’s civil defence theory and the lack of information being disseminated to the general public. The programme revealed that the government only intended to release the film if war was imminent (3 days before) … They interview a specialist, who had worked in the civil defence department, who says that ‘Protect and Survive’ should actually be known as ‘Neglect and Die’. I therefore think there is great scope in getting students to investigate why the British government took this approach. Political expedience is a reason put forward in an article entitled The strange death of UK civil defence education in the 1980s, which states that ‘Protect and Survive’ was only ever meant to be ‘politically defensible’ and that the reiterated instruction to ‘stay at home’, echoed in an earlier 1960s civil defence pamphlet the ‘Householders Handbook’, was merely aimed at prevented social panic and rioting.

Another theme which emerged was the relationship between popular culture and the nuclear threat and the Cold War in general:

I would imagine that the different generations of children would react differently – those of the 1950s I feel may not have had that much knowledge about the atom bomb, and so it had to be raised in a carefully considered way. Those in the 1980s however may have been much more aware of the dangers of nuclear attack – it was so much more prominent in daily media and in political events across the globe by that point. It was becoming much more prominent in popular culture by that point – pop music was referencing the dropping of the bomb and artists had been reflecting on its horrors too, and literature such as ‘On the Beach’ by Nevil Shute (which I found incredibly moving) would have been widely read.

I remember ‘Two Tribes’ very well and hadn’t realised that they had used soundbites ‘Protect and Survive’ in it. Another really interesting article entitled ‘Britannia Rules the Atom: The James Bond Phenomenon and Postwar British Nuclear Culture’ shed an interesting light on the context of the James Bond films of the Cold War. The article notes that James Bond films consistently overvalued Britain’s nuclear capabilities and that the ‘James Bond Phenomenon often paralleled British government policy and propaganda’. A specific example is given from the 1980s ‘Never say Never Again stood in sharp contrast to cultural manifestations of the fear of the global thermonuclear war that surfaced during President Ronald Reagan’s first term in office….And, what is more, Never Say Never Again seemed to mirror official British government propaganda, most notably Whitehall’s official civil defense booklet ‘Protect and Survive’.

So what about the impact back in the classroom?

One of the founding principles of the HA Teacher Fellowship Programme has been the assumption that improving subject knowledge improves the quality of teaching, no matter how good the teacher was to start with. On the basis of the comments of teachers from Week 2 we feel more confident than ever that this is the case. Some of the teacher comments illustrate this most eloquently:

I teach British Society 1979-1989 at A Level and I am now very aware that there is little reference made to nuclear paranoia and the way that popular culture responded to the international context at this time. I will certainly spend a bit of time looking at this this year. I might also think about planning a unit of work for year 9 entitled ‘Living through the Cold War’ which looks at the British experience along with the US, Soviet, Japanese and Eastern European experiences. Alternatively, I might narrow it down and get Year 9 to look at British government public information films (There are dozens of these on the National Archives website) and their value to the historian researching British society/culture at that time.

I found this week’s focus on the popular culture and media portrayal of the Cold War a fascinating one, and it has definitely provided me with some more high quality clips to use in my own teaching as well as distributing amongst colleagues. I find that a good video source can often provide students with a much needed opportunity to connect knowledge to a wider contextual framework, and to build that valuable sense of period which is often skipped past in order to get to the ‘exam focus’. In this I was reminded of Michael Fordham’s blog post about the value in teaching a knowledge rich curriculum that goes beyond the essentials (found here: https://clioetcetera.com/2016/11/19/what-makes-a-curriculum-knowledge-rich/), as while none of these video clips could be considered ‘essential’ to teaching the Cold War, they are crucial in helping students build connections and gaining confidence.

I found the focus this week of the cultural narrative of the Cold War a really interesting one. Seed’s article really stressed the unique quality of the Cold War in comparison to previous conflicts. I hadn’t really considered before, who was the ‘enemy’ in the Cold War – an ideology rather than a figurehead. I really like the idea of comparing the narratives of the Americans and Soviet Union, the Americans willing to depict the horrors of nuclear war in comparison to the topic being banned in communist countries. I would be interested to research further into what narrative was being told in the Soviet countries and how much they understood of the nuclear race against America. I would also be curious to find out the impact of the narrative on American society, the fact it was such a feature of science fiction almost allows it to take on a mythical stance so quickly after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.

Last week we were delighted to welcome our new Children’s Author/Illustrator Visiting Fellow, Francesca Sanna.

Francesca is an esteemed and award-winning children’s author and illustrator. Her first book, The Journey, has received widespread critical acclaim and was this week shortlisted for The Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2017. The book asks, ‘what is it like to have to leave everything behind and travel many miles to somewhere unfamiliar and strange? A mother and her two children set out on such a journey: one filled with fear of the unknown, but also great hope.’

During her time as Visiting Fellow, Francesca will be working on a range of projects. These will include conducting research for her next book, giving a talk on depicting refugees in children’s literature at a workshop to be held at Birkbeck and undertaking a series of visits to local primary schools. Over the coming weeks, Francesca will also be taking part in a Q&A session providing insight into the research and interviews she conducted while creating The Journey. Further details and information on all these activities will be posted on the project blog.

Together with the Historical Association, we recently launched a Teacher Fellowship Programme on “The Cold War in the Classroom”. Ten secondary school teachers attended a two-day residential held at Birkbeck College on the history and historiography of the Cold War, covering both academic and teaching practices. Following this, the fellows are currently undertaking a ten week online course exploring a range of historical sources and developing ways to use them in the classroom.

In the following article, originally published on The Historical Association, Ben Walsh provides an overview of discussions from week one.

Well, the HA Teacher Fellowship Programme on the Cold War is now well and truly underway. After an intensive opening weekend residential at Birkbeck University the fellows have been working away most diligently and impressively on the online course.

What is really striking is the level of engagement and enthusiasm which these full time working teachers are able to bring to the project. In the first week we asked to them to listen to some of the podcasts on the HA website, particularly Dr Elena Hore’s piece on Ideology and the Cold War. However, as our teachers will confirm, you should approach these podcasts with care. There is so much good material in the HA’s podcast offering that they can become addictive!

In addition to the podcasts the teachers have also been reading articles by leading academics in the field. The wonderfully titled ‘How (Not) to Study the Origins of the Cold War’ by Geir Lundestad generated a lot of interest and discussion about the Origins of the Cold War but also about current school curricula.

Key points emerging about the history were ….

The origins of the Cold War has long been dominated by a bipolar approach and the aim to apportion blame. There are different waves of interpretation that blame one side or the other, or both, as historians writing about the Cold War reassess the world they live in. But in school curricula this blame discourse is often studied as a static, fixed phenomenon that ended with 1989/1991. As our teachers are realising, the debate between different schools of interpretation by academic historians is very much ongoing.

There is a definite revisionist tendency emerging, as our teachers immerse themselves more deeply in the material. One teacher commented:

“There was an attempt to explain this in the podcast and I liked how Dr Hore polarised the two ideologies so clearly around the concept of private poverty and freedom. She made it clear that the two ideologies were inextricably opposed without overlap and both had expansionism at their core. I found it interesting that both ideologies hold the individual so centrally and each believed fundamentally in the interests of the individual.”

But they are also realising that there are many ways to be a ‘revisionist’. As one teacher explained:

“In terms of using this within lessons, I feel it will play directly into my Year 10 lessons within the new OCR Explaining the Modern World specification, as students had been very confused about why post-revisionism seemed to be broadly about recognising blame on both sides, but then confused by how Gaddis seemed to be predominantly blaming the USSR. I now feel equipped to blow apart the myth I’d perpetuated that post-revisionism was a unified school of thought.”

Another important feature emerging was the way in which the Cold War played out and was presented to populations back home. As another teacher commented:

“This therefore suggests that ideological differences were not the insurmountable obstacle that they are sometimes portrayed to be, and perhaps that they were instead used as a post hoc justification by the leaders of the two sides to convince their reluctant populations to continue their wartime sacrifices against a new ‘implacable’ foe (see the quotes in Reinisch’s UNRRA article about the British portrayal of the Polish elections) against whom the real struggle was more about advantage than survival. In this context then the Marshall Plan should perhaps be viewed not as a demonstration of American commitment to free-market economics, but instead the form of US intervention in Europe most acceptable to the general US population, but which still enabled the government to secure US interests there.”

So what about the impact back in the classroom?

In the midst of all the erudite scholarly comments, it was clear that the teachers were getting excited about this new found scholarly expertise and wanted to expose their students to it in the classroom. Here are some teacher comments so far:

“The debate around the origins of the Cold War has left me with several questions that I might consider tacking in the classroom. One question comes from reading the Lundestad article and an answer to it might challenge the traditionalist view of the origins: ‘Why did both sides in the Cold War see it as a struggle between good and evil?’ I found Hore’s podcast really thought provoking in terms of how the conflicting ideologies in the conflict were founded on the ideas of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy’ and I think this would be a really good way to begin challenge the idea of ‘blame’. A consideration of how each ideology held important but different views of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ could result in the USSR and USA starting out on an equal footing, which would allow us to think more objectively about the events that follow.”

“I feel my subject knowledge has increased a lot this week, particularly the differing opinions on why the Cold War began. I found the article by Lundstadt particularly interesting, and it has made me re-evaluate the way I teach the origins of the Cold War to my Year 13s. The role of ideology and how both parties used it for their own means was of particularly interest, and I think I know consider it to have a lesser role in the origins of the Cold War. The article has helped me think about what I really believe caused the CW, which I have now focused down to a series of actions and reactions shaped by each countries own views. Rather than teaching the origins in a simple chronological approach which I have found appropriate previously, I will certainly be adding in more elements of historiography.”

“I have very much re-examined my teaching of origins. I think, especially at A-level, students will be capable of looking at origins in its broader context. The ‘geography of the Cold War’ content session was particularly useful in developing a more global view of the subject and I feel empire, as a factor, could be introduced immediately as a narrative which is returned to throughout each stage of the Cold War. The residential had an immediate impact on my teaching.”

“Zubok’s ‘A Failed Empire’ was particularly useful in deepening my understanding of the post war atmosphere in the Soviet Union and their hopes for peace and a continuation of the war time alliance. My study of the Soviet Union has always abruptly ended in 1941 and therefore I see now that my understanding of the origins of the Cold War has been very Western centric and ‘orthodox’. Viewing events without a real understanding of how the West were perceived by the Soviets. I found a study of the Kennan and Novikov telegram’s fascinating and do intend to use these with my Year 10 students who at present are studying the historiography of the origins of the Cold War.”

If you like the look of what is going on in the Fellowship, we hope to run more programmes of a similar nature on a range of different periods of history. Keep visiting the HA web site for more details.

Socialist Internationalism Conference, Birkbeck College, University of London

3rd February 2017

Research on the global history of socialism has been growing, but the majority of narratives and frameworks for approaching the history of the so-called ‘socialist world’ are still focused on the relationship of the United States and the Soviet Union. In a one-day workshop, to be held on Friday 3rd February at Birkbeck College, discussion will take stock of recent historical contributions that shift focus away from the superpowers and from Washington and Moscow, and instead consider the circulation of ideas, goods, people, and practices within and beyond the socialist and communist worlds on their own terms.

Which conventional Cold War concepts does taking a global approach to the history of socialism and communist reinforce, and which does it contest? What are the conceptual and methodological challenges of constructing an alternative history of internationalism from a global socialist perspective? Was there such a phenomenon as ‘socialist globalisation’ and what did it entail in the context of the Cold War and decolonisation? How do we understand the global boundaries and exchanges between the communist world in the East and the institutions of (non-communist) socialist internationalism in the West? How does shifting perspectives away from the US-Soviet binary change our understanding of socialist networks? To what extent can we leave the view from the West behind?

The Socialist Internationalism workshop aims to foster discussion around these central questions through short presentations in a roundtable format. Presenters shall each discuss a primary source and explain the approach they take to transnational, global, and international history. Topics that will be addressed in the workshop will encompass: trade and exchange in the socialist world, the role and definition of development and humanitarianism in the socialist world, the roles of experts in socialism across the globe, and exchanges in culture and knowledge production among socialist countries and beyond.

For a month last summer (mid-May to mid-June, 2016), I had the privilege of joining the Reluctant Internationalists project group for research and interaction on themes of common interest. Among the project leader (Jessica Reinisch) and other members and guests (among them Heidi Tworek and Elidor Mehilli), the intellectual energy was remarkable. At several conferences, talks and workshops organised over the course of the short time I was there (on the Armenian genocide, the history of medicine, expertise, etc.) a broad range of interests was paired with impressive regional and temporal depth of knowledge. It is not surprising to me that so many of the project members have found jobs and received honours in the meantime.

Beyond the scholarly merit of the project, I was above all taken with the comradery within the group. The tenor of discussions was always productive and the atmosphere intense intellectually, but relaxed socially. It was truly a joy to think and work among such young scholars and enhances my faith in the future of historical inquiry that they are the faces of the next generation.

As for my own research, Britain was just where I needed to be this summer. Much of my time outside of Birkbeck was spent between the National Archives in Kew and the British Library. In both places I found a wealth of documents and pamphlets relating to the book project I am currently completing on “The Age of Questions,” tentatively subtitled “First Attempt at a History (in Aggregate) of the Eastern, Social, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions from Roughly 1800 to 1945, and Beyond.” The Reluctant Internationalists did me the honour of asking me to deliver the opening address for their new Centre for the Study of Internationalism, for which I spoke on my book project.

What was “The Age of Questions”? From a spattering of references to the American and Catholic questions in the mid-to-late eighteenth century, there followed an interrogative deluge in the nineteenth. Before long, publicists, scholars, statesmen, novelists, religious authorities, millers, doctors, and others competed to derive the best solutions to the Eastern, Belgian, woman, labour [worker], agrarian, and Jewish questions. These were folded into larger ones, like the European, nationality, and social questions, even as they competed for attention with countless smaller ones, like the Kansas, Macedonian, Schleswig-Holstein, and cotton questions. The most prominent figures put their pens to them: Alexis de Tocqueville, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Frederick Douglass, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Adolf Hitler, to name just a few. That questions were construed as problems is evident from another familiar formulation: the “definitive” or “final solution.” My book wonders: Was there a family resemblance between questions, or certain patterns that recurred or migrated across them? Have they disappeared, or are they still with us?

Being among the Reluctant Internationalists at Birkbeck helped me bring this project to completion. My archival and other findings at Kew and the BL filled the last of the holes in the analysis relating to the origin of the age, in which British politicians and publicists played the leading role. I left London just days before the Brexit vote. As such, I will always remember that month as an especially wonderful time before the general unravelling that has since ensued, and that shows all the more the unquestionable relevance of the Reluctant Internationalists project.